Installing Eclipse Luna on Ubuntu

I wrote this a few years ago and am mainly posting it for testing and my own reference. I’ll probably update it eventually.

Download and extract eclipse. It should be in your downloads folder with the name eclipse-cpp-luna-SR1a-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz

Steps and Notes:

Terminal Commands:

Update Repositories

sudo apt-get update

Install Java

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk

Change to user directory

cd ~

Move eclipse package to /opt directory

sudo mv Downloads/eclipse-cpp-luna-SR1a-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz /opt/

Change to /opt directory

cd /opt

Unzip the eclipse package

sudo tar -xvf eclipse-cpp-luna-SR1a-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz

Create a desktop entry:

cd ~/../../usr/share/applications

Create a file called eclipse.desktop in the applications directory.

sudo touch eclipse.desktop

Edit the file; if vim is not already installed, you may need to type:sudo apt-get-install vim to install it.

sudo vim eclipse.desktop

Type i, which is the insert key and will allow you to begin typing into your file.

i

File Contents:

[Desktop Entry]

Name=EclipseType=ApplicationExec=/opt/eclipse/eclipseTerminal=falseIcon=/opt/eclipse/icon.xpmComment=Integrated Development EnvironmentNoDisplay=falseCategories=Development;IDE;Name[en]=eclipse

Hit the escape key, then w (write), then q (quit), and hit enter/return.

esc+wq+enter

Install the desktop file.

Failure to include the [Desktop Entry] group header at the top of the eclipse.desktop file will cause this command to give the error message: Error on file “eclipse.desktop”: Key file does not start with a group